I know it goes without saying, but I’m saying it anyway. This year has been a humdinger. We totally needed a pandemic in an election year, right? We won’t even get into how the Gulf Coast has been pummeled this year.

This morning, I read the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree in Luke 13. It reminded me of a sermon preached by a friend of mine a year or so ago. If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s about a land owner who has a fig tree. He goes to get fruit, but it never has any, so he tells the gardener to cut it down. The gardener asks for one more year so he can dig around it and fertilize it. In simple terms, he’s going to break up the soil to get closer to the roots, and then dump poop around it. If 2020 was a parable, I think this would be it.

When I heard the sermon, I thought, “Yeah, that’s what Chicago has done to me.” Then I realized I was the fig tree. It’s not a secret that I didn’t love living there, but I did find my purpose in my writing, and I grew in other areas, too. The gardener piled a lot of poop around me, but now I bear fruit.

Hard times come for everyone. It’s inevitable. Being open to it, figuring out what you’re supposed to take from it, well, that feels more productive to me than complaining and posting “If 2020 was a _____” memes. You can get bitter, or you can get better.